Best 36 quotes in «cynic quotes» category

Having in our childhood felt primal awe for the spectacle of the holiday, we are told to age into feeling sullen and resentful. You are supposed to proclaim Santa dead like preadolescent Nietzsches and decry the whole month as an orgy of crass commercialism.

I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom.

It is not only every man for himself but also every man for some men for himself.

It is only the cynic who claims “to speak the truth” at all times and in all places to all men in the same way, but who, in fact, displays nothing but a lifeless image of the truth. . . . He dons the halo of the fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowance for human weaknesses; but, in fact, he is destroying the living truth between men. He wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the community in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which “cannot bear the truth.

I hate the world. Everything comes into it so clean and goes out so dirty. (from COVER CHARGE - currently not listed)

Scratch a cynic and you will find a disappointed romantic.

She is so free with herself and so certain of her path, something I now cynically believe only comes from not being aware of the infinite multitude of right paths.

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers, things standing shall fall, but the moving ever shall stay.

That's what I've never been able to get about religion: that charmless combination of altruism and insanity. Give me a cynical, self-interested bastard any day of the week; at least you can play chicken with him and know he'll stick to the rules.

The first rule in life is 'everybody lies.' Remember that and you'll get a lot further.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not. The atheist is a religious person. He believes in atheism as though it were a new religion.

Mitch's take on humanity had deteriorated to the point where he assumed someone was lying if her lips were moving.

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to the light, always pursuing vermin and never hunting noble game.

This boy," he said, indicating the paintings with one sweep of his arms, "was romantic. He thought that it was beauty that bound everything together. And for him it was true. Life had been beautiful for him. He was very young. He knew very little of life. He saw beauty but he did not feel any true passion. How could he? He did not know. He had not really encountered the force of beauty's opposite." "Are you more cynical now, then?" she asked him. "Cynical," he frowned, "No, not that. I know that there is an ugly side of life-and not just human life. I know that everything is not simply beautiful. I am not a romantic as this boy was. But I am not a cynic either. There is something enduring in all of life, Anne, something tough. Something. Something terribly weak yet incredibly powerful...

Where neither go wrong, the naive only see the world as a victim of bad doctrine; the cynic only sees good doctrine as a victim of the world.

A beardless cynic is the shame of nature.

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word.

We are all cynics now, I suppose, and even a mewling infant knows that to save a life is to make an eternal enemy.

A cynic who was still saddened whenever his jaundiced view of mankind was confirmed.

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.

Anyone can be an idealist. Anyone can be a cynic. The hard part lies somewhere in the middle.

"Cynic" is a word invented by optimists to put down realists.

Cynicism is easy. An optimist is a braver cynic.

An executive should be a realist; and no one is less realistic than the cynic.

Cynicism is reality with an alternate spelling.

Idealist: a cynic in the making.

Someone once said a cynic is just a disappointed romantic. That really, really sums me up.

I would rather die a dreamer than live as a cynic.

I don't consider myself a cynic. I think of myself as a skeptic and a realist.

the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

We shall build on. On through the cynic

Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch and the sinner his justification.

A cynic is just a wounded romantic.

Diogenes was a cynic at his best. He was in search of an honest man but not an hones woman.

You're a cynic," Urgit accused. Silk shook his head. "No, Your Majesty. I'm a realist.

A positive person discusses possibilities. A negative person discusses problems. A cynic is oblivious to positivity and negativity.